• Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple TV+ show “Disclaimer” aired its finale this week.
• The story ends with a twist, centered on a sex scene, which shakes up the rest of the series.
• Star Leila George spoke to BI about filming two versions of the pivotal scene.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the season finale of “Disclaimer.”

“Disclaimer” ended this week with a major twist that changes the way viewers perceive the entire series.

THE Apple TV+ show, adapted by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón from Renée Knight’s 2015 novel, features Cate Blanchett as Catherine Ravenscroft, a successful documentarian whose life unravels when she receives a novel in which she is the central character. The novel depicts a young mother’s scandalous affair with a teenage boy while on vacation in Italy, and the tragedy that ensues when the teenager drowns while saving his lover’s young son.

The book, titled “The Perfect Stranger”, was actually published by Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), a retired school teacher, widower and father of Jonathan, the deceased young man at the center of the story. Stephen’s late wife, Nancy, held a grudge against Catherine for decades after discovering erotic photographs of her among Jonathan’s belongings after his death.

Therefore, Nancy filled in the blanks and deduced that Jonathan and Catherine were having a secret affair and that Jonathan’s love for Catherine led him to sacrifice his life to save her son, Nicholas. She writes a manuscript about what she is certain happened between the two, and when Stephen discovers it after Nancy’s death from cancer, he publishes it with the intention of getting revenge on Catherine for the death of his son.

“Disclaimer” unfolds in a non-linear fashion, where we get snatches of flashbacks to the fateful meeting between Catherine and Jonathan years before. Throughout the first five episodes of the series, these flashbacks tell a consistent story: Catherine seduced Jonathan, pursuing him aggressively.

However, the penultimate episode reveals some inaccuracies in the novel’s version of events (such as Jonathan’s girlfriend leaving Italy prematurely because of an argument with him, not because of the death of her aunt). This episode ends with Catherine and Stephen finally coming face to face, and Catherine demanding that Stephen listen to her recount what really happened years ago in Italy.

In the finale, Catherine finally tells her side of the story: she and Jonathan never had an affair. Rather, he broke into her hotel room, threatened her and her sleeping son with a knife, and then raped her repeatedly. The erotic photos Nancy discovered were not mementos of their relationship, but rather images that Jonathan forced a traumatized Catherine to pose for during the violent encounter.

Catherine says she had gathered physical evidence of his rape with the intention of going to the police, but chose to destroy it and bury the truth after Jonathan’s death.

The “flashbacks” we saw earlier in the season, showing Catherine as a sex-starved cougar and Jonathan as her hapless prey, weren’t flashbacks at all. Instead, they were enactments of Nancy’s imagined (and ultimately false) version of what happened between the two.

Stephen, at first reluctant to believe that his deceased son was actually a rapist, begins his plan for revenge. He leaves a barely conscious Catherine, to whom he had previously given drugged tea, and goes to the hospital to kill her ex-son, Nicholas, now a young man addicted to drugs who is in intensive care after an overdose. He stops when a semi-conscious Nicholas calls his mother, seeming to realize that what Catherine told him about Jonathan was true.

Eventually, he burns Catherine’s photos and abandons his plans. Meanwhile, Catherine chose not to reconcile with her husband, who immediately left her after hearing the story of the affair and seemed relieved to learn that it was in fact rape, and makes amends with a recovered Nicholas.

The twist at the end of “Disclaimer” relies on two versions of a sex scene, both performed by Leila George.

We first see the meeting between Jonathan and young Catherine (played by Leila George in the Italy sequences) depicted as a sex scene in episode three. The truth, that it was rape, is shown in the finale. Both versions are comprehensive, detailed and graphic, and were intense to film.

According to George, Cuarón was completely upfront with her about what the role would entail, telling her exactly how he wanted the graphic scenes filmed and what would be shown. These scenes, she said, were very finely detailed in the script, which Cuarón showed her before she agreed to sign.

For George, it was important to know that any sex scenes she did were essential to the story and not gratuitous. “For this particular work, I think the whole story revolves around this evening,” George said. “It’s vital to the story. There’s nothing in it that isn’t necessary. It felt very, very necessary.”

She and Louis Partridge, who plays Jonathan, worked with intimacy coordinator Samantha Murray for about a week before filming the intimate scenes.

“Everyone is safe as long as you follow the moves that you have planned,” George said, comparing coordinated sex scenes to fight scenes or dance scenes. “That’s what we did.”

It also helped that she and Partridge established a relationship.

“It really depends a lot on the other person and who you work with,” George said, adding of Partridge: “He’s brilliant and mature beyond his years. I felt so lucky to ‘be a team with him.’

Having confidence when you have to undress in a room full of people also helps: “I practice a lot.”

George doesn’t know why Cuarón called her out of the blue to ask her to participate in “Disclaimer.”

George’s time on “Disclaimer” was a whirlwind.

According to the actor, it all started with a “crazy phone call” from the Oscar-winning director asking him to participate in his series. There was no script to review in advance, so George quickly read the book it was based on in order to prepare.

From there, she had just three days to get on a plane and go straight to fittings before flying to Italy. She estimates she was on set about 10 days after that first call.

“I don’t know what made him call me that day, what he had seen or who really put me in front of him, I really don’t know,” George said. “But it was definitely one of the best phone calls I’ve ever received in my life.”

The season finale of “Disclaimer” is now streaming on Apple TV+.